


November, 1991

by vanillafluffy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Food, Gen, Ice Cream, Mad Science, Maria Stark's Good Parenting, Medical Experimentation, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Plothole Fill, Super Soldier Serum, Thanksgiving, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 14:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12749784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: What if the Super Soldier Serum stolen during Civil War wasn't the whole batch? What if Howard tested a sample before that fateful night in December? Tony Stark learns things about his parents that he didn't expect.





	November, 1991

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katie_P](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katie_P/gifts).



“Excuse me...Mr. Stark?”

Tony turns, a little warily, but the woman addressing him wears a friendly smile. His first thought is, _If she’s a process server, she can serve me any time._ Instead of paperwork, she offers a firm handshake. “I’m Andrea Muir. You don’t know me, but my parents both worked for Stark Industries when I was a kid.”

She’s definitely not a kid now--Tony guesses that she’s maybe a decade younger than he is. Long legs and boots with killer heels--she tops him by at least five inches--tailored burgundy pants-suit with a colorful scarf. She's absolutely gorgeous, mahogany hair framing her face in a short, choppy cut and bone structure to make a supermodel weep--one look at her and Tony wants to hire her to promote something, anything….

“I just wanted to say thank you,” she says. “My folks were travelling for Stark Industries when they found and adopted me.”

Tony starts to nod. Something about Andrea’s husky voice makes him want to agree with whatever she’s saying. Then the light twinkles off one of the stones in the brooch her scarf is pinned with, and he focuses abruptly. “Your pin,” he blurts, staring at it. It looks remarkably like one of his mother had--he hasn’t seen than one in ages.

One hand reaches up to touch the little carousel horse. “Your mother gave me this, the only time I ever met her.” She smiles. “She was really nice.”

“When was this?”

“When I first got to the States…November, 1991.”

The hairs on the back of Tony’s neck prickle. Just weeks before her death. “November…?”

“It was right before my first American Thanksgiving.” Andrea’s Bambi-brown eyes twinkle. ”That’s _still_ my favorite holiday.” 

“I’m glad it has a good home,” Tony says, indicating the brooch. It’s gold over silver, studded with faceted semi-precious stones, a merry-go-round horse prancing in place.

His mother wore the vermeil brooch often during his childhood. He hadn’t noticed its absence from her jewelry collection. _If I thought about it, I would’ve guessed it was pinned to something that got donated after she died. That she gave it away…not surprising. Like the time she gave her shearling coat to that woman waiting for the bus. The only reason she didn’t have Jarvis drive the woman home was, we had tickets to something, and she didn’t want to miss the opening curtain…._

Tony makes small talk for another couple minutes before disengaging. It’s a good thing he isn’t driving; right now he’s thinking so hard about the encounter with Andrea that he’d probably drive up on the sidewalk. On one hand, it’s ridiculous to think that his mother’s impulsive generosity has anything to do with her subsequent death. On the other, stranger shit has happened….

Once he’s safely back in his workshop, Tony addresses JARVIS-the-AI. “Do we have Stark personnel records for a couple named Muir? This would’ve been 1991 or earlier. They had an adopted daughter named Andrea.”

One good thing about being a tech-intensive company, they _do_ have digital records going back that far, and in the case of Theodore Muir and Katherine Kirby, the records go back even farther. Kate started out in Accounts in 1978, became an auditor in 1984. Theo Muir joined Stark as a programmer in 1983. He and Kate were married in 1986. Medical records--Tony is surprised to find something usually confidential as part of the documentation, but apparently things were different then--show attempted fertility treatments and repeated failures.

As part of their participation in glasnost, Stark Industries went scouting for a location in Eastern Europe for a semi-conductor factory. The Muirs were inspecting one possible facility, abandoned for several years, where they’d discovered a small girl confined in a storage closet. Local authorities shrugged. There were no records of a missing child, and the factory had a bad reputation. (There’s no intel on what was meant by ‘bad reputation’;) Tony scowls. 

Kate and Theo returned to the States with their new daughter, Andrea. Although she’d begun to lose her baby teeth, suggesting she was between six and seven years old, she appeared to be more the size of a poorly-grown four-year old. Reports from three different pediatricians held little hope that the child would be healthy; quite possibly, she wouldn’t live to adulthood. There’s a faded picture of the little girl in a filthy shift-dress, hair long and matted, looking terrified.

“There are extensive files for November 24, 1991, including video recordings,” JARVIS informs him.

“Show me.”

“This is Andrea,” says Howard Stark’s voice as the camera pans slowly around the child in the exam room. “She is approximately six-and-a-half years old. Poor nutrition and confinement have stunted her growth.” Tony stares. The child’s huge brown eyes remind him of a Keene painting, dominating her pinched face. Her front teeth, top and bottom, are misssing and her hair has been shorn, presumably to remove the matted clumps from the earlier picture. No sign of today’s beauty…this girl shows the skull beneath the skin. The camera lingers on knobby bones: gnarled elbows and knees, every vertabrae in her spine, uneven shoulders and clawed hands. 

His father’s voice goes on to methodically catalogue the child’s health issues, a long and daunting list. Scoliosis has twisted her frame. Emphysema has badly damaged her lungs. Tests show a heart murmur. She breathes with her mouth open, and every few breaths, she gives a little gasp, wheezing for more air. He would never have guessed this vacant-eyed child was today’s Andrea Muir. As the camera swings around, there are Theo and Kate in the background, looking anguished. 

Tony recognizes the man in the white lab coat. Dr. McAllister was the Stark’s family doctor for as long as Tony could remember. He’d retired not long after Howard’s and Maria’s deaths. His name hadn’t been on any of the nay-saying reports; apparently he’s more sanguine about Andrea’s chances. 

“You’ve been counselled about the potential sideeffects of this treatment,” he says to her parents. “It is _completely_ experimental. We’ve had promising results on animal subjects, but it hasn’t been tested on a person before.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” Theo says. “We just want her to have a chance,” Kate adds, voice quivering.

Maria Stark is crouched near the girl’s chair, speaking to her in a soft voice, not English. “What’s she saying?” Tony asks JARVIS. 

“We’re going to help you,” he translates. “The doctor is going to make you feel better. And then there will be something nice.”

“Ice cream?” Andrea’s shy hope is the first sign of childlike behavior Tony has seen. _Considering how hungry she must have been for most of her early years, no wonder Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday!_

The adults all smile when Maria translates that.

“All the ice cream you want, baby,” Kate promises.

There’s a brief jump in the time stamp. Andrea is now strapped to a gurney, a sheet draped modestly over her loins. Her ribcage showing each curve of bone as she gasps for breath, every enlarged and crooked joint--poor wretched child, it hurts to look at her. 

Staring at the set-up, the girl restrained by padded straps, mechanisms that look like some kind of diabolical fuel-injection system, Tony almost doesn’t notice what’s going on elsewhere in the shot. Almost. Because his dad is busy in the background, and the motion of him opening a titanium briefcase catches Tony’s eye. Howard takes out a packet of shimmering blue liquid and places the whole thing into a port in the machine.

“Oh my god,” Tony says aloud as the penny drops: _It’s a test of the Super Soldier serum before my parents were murdered for it. It_ didn’t _all go to Hydra…._

He watches, breathless, as Dr. McAllister rolls a canopy into place above the gurney. Howard is scanning readouts on a nearby monitor.

“Phase One on my mark. Three…two…one--mark.” McAllister thumbs a switch. Blue light strobes from under the canopy. “Phase Two in three…two…one--mark!” Another switch, and Andrea begins shrieking, a rush of words , begging. 

The AI translates: “’I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please Mama, make it stop, it’s hurting me….’ Variations on that in Romanian.”

Tony feels sick to his stomach. He wants to look away, but he can’t. He has to know what happened. _My father actually did this to a child?_ His mom stands in th background, looking distressed, her hand on Kate’s shoulder. _How could they?_

“And…shut it down.”

“That’s too tight! Let me out!” JARVIS relays Andrea’s complaints.

When Howard rolls the canopy away, it’s easy to see why she’s uncomfortable. The straps are digging into limbs that are no longer stunted. Released, she hops nimbly from the gurney and scurries away from Howard and the doctor. _She doesn’t look pathetic now--she looks_ pissed.

An exam follows. Maria Stark is beside the girl, speaking to her, telling her what a good girl she’s been. _My mother spoke Romanian? I had no idea. Italian, French, Spanish, German and Portugese, yes. Japanese, too--I remember that. But Romanian? That’s unexpected._

The camera records striking changes. Andrea stands up straight; where previously she’d barely come up to Theo’s waist, her head is almost up to his shoulder now. Her adult teeth have magically come in straight and white. Her hair looks glossier; her face that shows a hint of the prettiness to come. Her wide, doe-like eyes watch the procedings with a mixture of curiousity and suspicion. She looks like a normal, healthy kid.

Tests show that Andrea’s original problems are fixed. Her bones are strong and aligned properly. She breathes easily and her heartbeat is regular. McAllister enumerates the miracles. Howard is happy for the Muirs, and pleased that he’ll be able to hand over the remaining serum over to he Departmen of Defense with proven success.

Another change of scene…someone has found a yellow dress for Andrea--a bit large on her, but since she’s grown so much, it’s not surprising that they’d had to guess her size. As he watches, Maria unpins the brooch from her own jacket and pins it to the yellow dress. “You’ve been a very brave girl.” 

Andrea hugs her, delighted by the shiny trinket. She prances in place, looking down at the little pin, completely transformed from the dull, gasping child of an hour ago.

“You’re going to have so much fun, dressing a little girl,” Maria says to Kate as Andrea capers happily. “I hope you’ll let me play fairy godmother.”

Tony winces. _Too bad she never got the chance. Too bad the serum wasn’t used the way my dad intended. But at least they changed the world for one small, sickly child._

“Google search for Andrea Muir,” he says when the lump in his throat recedes sufficiently.

There she is on the cover of _Sports Illustrated_. Not as a supermodel; she set a new record for the New York Triathlon. How the heck did he miss this cover? Tony squints at the date. _No wonder--I was captive in a cave at the time._

Andrea is eye-catching in a bright pink crop top. She has lean muscle mass where she’d once been malnourished. Nothing hints that she’d been pronounced unlikely to live to grow up--she’s almost defiantly healthy. _Clearly, the Super Soldier serum did right by little Andrea._

Tony skims the article; she dedicates the win to her mother, who recently died of breast cancer. He retrieves news coverage of the Five Boroughs Marathon on another screen. Andrea moves like a gazelle. Her face is flushed and her hair touselled as she bounds across the finish line, but compared to the competitors who straggle in behind her, she looks like she could grab a snack and do it again.

She has an impressive number of wins for various triathlons, marathons, and various other events, and he finds laudatory articles going clear back to her high school track star days. Now she’s giving back with a day job as athletics director at a school on the Upper West Side.

Andrea doesn’t have an extravagant lifestyle; she’s living within her means in a rent-controlled apartment. She pays for wifi, but not cable. Most of her wardrobe apparently comes from consignment shops, the notable exception being her running shoes. Her biggest extravagance is a penchant for Italian food--she eats out at least once a week, mostly in Little Italy.

Stark Industries has sponsored numerous athletes over the years…they have a vested interest in this one, even if he’s the only one who knows it. Tony gazes at the _Sports Illustrated_ picture, thinking about the most effective way to lure her to the newly-formed Stark Industries track team. _It should be interesting to see her go up against Rogers and Barnes._

_I’ll invite her to dinner for the pitch._ Tony nearly drools; he’s not jaded by his personal chef’s amazing cuisine. _If she likes Italian food, she’ll be blissed out after one of Giuseppe’s authentic feasts._ There are so many delicious possibilities, from antipasto to osso buco to sweet, sweet zabaglione…or tiramisu with a touch of orange…cannolis with pistachio-mascarpone filling…or-- Tony thinks of the old video and laughs out loud. 

_Gelato. Tortoni. Spumoni. Lots of it. All the ice cream she can eat._

_…_


End file.
